4 Ethereal is a network traffic analyzer for Unix-ish operating systems.
5 It is based on GTK+, a graphical user interface library, and libpcap,
6 a packet capture and filtering library.
8 The official home of Ethereal is
10 http://ethereal.zing.org
12 The latest distribution can be found in the subdirectory
14 http://ethereal.zing.org/distribution
20 Ethereal is known to compile and run under Linux (2.0.35) and Solaris
21 (2.6). It should run on other systems without too much trouble.
24 Installation Checklist (Short):
26 [ ] 1. Unpack the archive.
28 [ ] 2. Run './configure; make; make install; make install-man'.
29 If there are any problems, read on:
32 Installation Checklist (Long):
34 [ ] 0. This is alpha software. Beware.
36 [ ] 1. Make sure you have GTK+ installed. Try running 'gtk-config
37 --version'. If you need to install/reinstall GTK, you can find
42 Ethereal should work with the latest stable (1.0.x) version, but
43 I've had reports that it doesn't compile with the development
46 [ ] 2. Make sure you have libpcap installed. The latest version can be
49 ftp://ftp.ee.lbl.gov .
51 Make sure you install the headers ('make install-incl') when you
54 [ ] 3. Run './configure' in the Ethereal distribution directory.
55 Running './configure --help' displays a list of options.
56 The file 'INSTALL' contains general instructions for running
59 Ethereal installs a support file (manuf) in /usr/local/etc by
60 default. You can change this location with the --sysconfdir
63 [ ] 4. Run 'make'. Hopefully, you won't run into any problems.
65 [ ] 5. Run './ethereal', and make sure things are working. You must
66 have root privileges in order to capture live data.
68 [ ] 6. Run 'make install'. If you wish to install the man page, run
69 'make install-man'. You're done.
75 In order to capture packets from the network, you need to be running
76 as root. Although it might be tempting to make the Ethereal executable
77 setuid root, please don't - alpha code is by nature not very robust, and
78 liable to contain security holes.
80 The filtering mechanism is far from complete. Until the interface
81 solidifies, here's a description of what each component of the filter
84 - 'Filter name' entry: Gives a name to the filter you are about to create
85 or modify, e.g. 'Web and DNS traffic'
87 - 'Filter string' entry: The text describing the filtering action to
88 take. It must have the same format as tcpdump filter strings (both
89 programs use the same underlying library), e.g.
91 'tcp port 80 or tcp port 443 or port 53'
93 - 'New' button: If there is text in the two entry boxes, adds it to the
96 - 'Change' button: Modifies the currently selected list item to match
97 what's in the two entry boxes.
99 - 'Copy' button: Makes a copy of the currently-selected list item.
101 - 'Delete' button: Deletes the currently-selected list item.
103 - 'OK' button: Sets the selected list item as the active filter. If
104 nothing is selected, turns filtering off.
106 - 'Save' button: Saves the current filter list in
107 $HOME/.ethereal/filters.
109 - 'Cancel' button: Closes the window without making changes.
115 The wiretap library is a packet-capture library currently under
116 development parallel to ethereal. In the future it is hoped that
117 wiretap will have more features than libpcap, but wiretap is still in
118 its infancy. You can compile ethereal with the wiretap library by using
119 './configure --with-wiretap'. Using wiretap will allow you to read
120 pcap, Sniffer, Sun "snoop", and LANalyzer trace files, but it disables
121 display filters. You can still capture packets from within ethereal
122 using libpcap, and therefore use libpcap-style capture filters, however.
124 If you can live without display filters and would like to read non-pcap
125 capture files, give wiretap a try. If you want to add support for other
126 packet-capture file formats, please look at the wiretap source code in the
129 Please report any problems that are wiretap related to
130 Gilbert Ramirez <gram@verdict.uthscsa.edu>. He uses token-ring at work, so he
131 is especially interested in any non-token-ring trace files you can send him.
137 There is no warranty, expressed or implied, associated with this product.
138 Use at your own risk.